Mississippi: Court Orders District to Desegregate its Schools

"School Bus" by Johannes Thiel licensed under CC BY 2.0
School Bus” by Johannes Thiel licensed under CC BY 2.0

Source: National Post

Federal Judge Debra Brown ordered the Cleveland School District in Mississippi to finally integrate its middle schools and high schools — which, for the past decades, has had an all-black middle and all-black high school, and an all-white middle and all-white high school. The district is physically divided by railroad tracks, onto which the white population of families falls westward, and the black population eastward.

The court order will require the district to integrate all students into one middle school and one high school. District officials have been running an “illegal dual system for its black and white children,” the National Post reported.

“District officials had argued that the Justice Department’s consolidation plan would trigger white flight, making it all the more difficult to achieve integration. They had put forth two alternative plans that would have kept the two high schools open, relying on choice and magnet programs to try to create diversity.”

Judge Brown ordered both plans unconstitutional, as they had in previous years already tried it. The middle school is estimated to enroll 71 percent black students and 26 percent white; the high school will enroll 63 percent black students and 32 percent white students.

Read full story at: National Post

Education, News
Education, News